


Don Juan Triumphant

by cegodfre, Lilith Sedai (orphan_account)



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28097187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cegodfre/pseuds/cegodfre, https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Lilith%20Sedai
Summary: The Phantom of the Opera, told from Erik's point of view. PG-13. Angst, drama, darkfic.
Kudos: 2





	Don Juan Triumphant

**Author's Note:**

> The Phantom of the Opera, told from Erik's point of view. PG-13. Angst, drama, darkfic.

We have taken from the defeated  
What they had to leave us-- a symbol:  
A symbol perfected in death.  
\--T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding  
from The Four Quartets

How it was with Christine and myself will no doubt be greatly distorted for the benefit of the public eye. Not everyone has the depth of understanding required to comprehend what actually transpired between us. That is to be expected in a world which considers only the surface aspect, a world which tramples the unusual or the weak underfoot without pausing to weigh the significance of such a callous action.

It is not for that world or for its average inhabitant that I record the truth of the matter. It is for those few who have the rare gift to see beyond that which lies beneath the mask, without trying to pretend that the horror doesn't exist. I want to talk to those who can see and accept, and still give of themselves.

When I think of the numbers of swooning ladies who will follow that strutting dandy Raoul with their breathless eyes and their amorous hearts, it disgusts me. They will see the handsome face of a Vicomte born and bred to beauty and gentility, and they will care for nothing else.

Those ladies can think of nothing but the perfect romance, can imagine nothing other than a faerie tale in which all is well, and none of the characters get hurt-- at least, none of the ones who matter-- and everyone lives happily ever after. Except, of course, the monster, who is obligated to make his noble sacrifice and then wander off to die a prolonged and solitary death, presumably of a broken heart.

But that is not the song I am about to write. I am going to tell a different story, a true story. There is romance in it, of course, but romance of a purer quality, made more real by tragedy.

To deceive Christine Daae was, I suppose, as much a crime as my critics claim it was. In her broken state of despair, the bleak depression brought on by the sudden death of her father, she would have believed anything. She truly thought I was an angel.

After the practice of such an unlikely deception on an unstable, confused victim, the actual abduction pales, does it not? You must consider that I took her only a hundred yards from her dressing room, though she originally believed it was much farther. I gave her freedom to come and go as she chose. I gave her my undying adoration. I gave her a voice which shook the foundation of the hearts of men. And I gave her truth: the identity of her mysterious angel. She realized those things for herself, and so she did not resent the original deception.

Few can truly guess at the content of the long, mysterious days we spent together, and this is where the perception of the masses will begin to err, for the most part. Some may paint a picture of the two of us spending long days entirely in the throes of song. Others might foolishly think me a weak man, in the grip of addiction to drugs, or as the slave of a purely spiritual drive to compose music. Still others will no doubt paint my hands with even more blood, more grotesque murders, than those I was forced to commit. However, even that is not as painful as those who may believe Christine was thoroughly repelled by me, that she was a constant victim of terror, or that I committed atrocities on her person.

But there are those who will glimpse the truth of our days together, more or less. There are those who will see, who will correctly imagine the delicate, dimly illuminated tableau of the days after I brought Christine Daae across the lake and led her into the candlelit confines of my bedroom, where the pipe organ towered against the wall, its brass throats silent, waiting to join their rumbling voices with her crystalline notes.

I provided a full wardrobe for her before I stole her away, dozens of rich dresses made of brocade, velvet, nankeen, lace, with gilt trim, fashionable bodices and graceful, delicate frills. I was determined to give her a choice of all possible styles and colors, the most beautiful things I could imagine or find to select. Along with them I provided cosmetics for her, soaps and perfumes and the little herbal shampoo concoctions ladies of wealth love.

I chose nightgowns for her to wear: rich flowing silks, soft cottons, fetching laces, in all lengths and styles, some for rich, tantalizing fashion and some for warmth and comfort. I provided her with delicate feminine underthings, ordering them from dubious shopkeepers without a trace of conscience, and no one dared question my purchases. In those also I strove for variety, that she might choose what most pleased her.

I carried all these things into the catacombs of the Opera only days before I spirited her away. I ferried them across the lake and stacked the parcels in her room. I tore away the paper and strings which bound them, I pulled the sweet-smelling dresses and their sachets from rustling tissue. I burned the papers in the fireplace methodically, as I hung the dresses in her wardrobe, as I arranged the bottles on her desk or on the vanity in her marble bathroom. I laid the underthings in neat stacks in the wooden chest of drawers, feeling oddly impersonal. It would be the last time my hands or eyes would ever touch them, I knew, but I did not acknowledge the moment as one might expect, for they were only lace and silk, just finely woven cloth, never worn.

Silver brushes and combs for her shining hair, mirrors in gilt frames... I have a hatred of mirrors which is understandable, but for her they would be indispensible. I bought sconces to hang on the walls, to arrange on her dressers and tables. I filled them with scented candles. I bought writing paper, pens, and ink. I bought finely cut cloaks and capes, plumed hats, silky lace trimmed handkerchiefs, soft slippers, fancy shoes... anything, really, that I could find which might please her. For a blissful week I lived only in the immediate, my doubts and fears vanished in the flood of acquisition, the torrent of riches which I hoped would dull the impact of the abduction I had planned...

Then I rose from my chair, and I went to her where she waited for her Angel, and she seemed to have anticipated the fondest wish of my heart. She asked to see me, and to leave the world of men to accompany me...

I led her into my home, singing. Her eyes were soft, almost unseeing. She was thoroughly entranced, drowning in an ocean of the keenest listening. On that night alone I touched her freely, a gentle intimacy which drew no protest from her, which increased her immersion in the power of my voice. Of course, I did not paw at her like a schoolboy, I restrained myself well within the limits defined by propriety. And her little hand rose to stroke my mask, wondering even then what lay beneath it. Just as she had wondered with burning curiosity about the nature of the being who sang to her behind her mirror, just as she had dared to press her tempting body against the mirror, her voice low and sensual as she made her bold demand to see her angel, and to accompany him when he returned to heaven.

She was always brave like that, in an unthinking way. That fearlessness, I think, came out of her unconscious indifference to her fate. Her father was dead and she had no other family or even a lover, therefore she did not care much about what might happen to her, she was not concerned with caution and consequences.

I brought her to my home, in the midst of all the wealth I had provided for her, and then I sang her to sleep. I did this because I did not want the spell to break just yet. I was weary, I was astonished by the audacity of what I had done. Here in my home, in the very bedroom where I lay down each night to sleep in my coffin lined with red velvet, there stood a living breathing woman, and in her misty eyes there dawned an emotion completely unfamiliar to me. An emotion which no woman had ever before bestowed on me. This child was as lonely as I, and already she dared to love, to desire, what she did not quite understand...

I had to send her to sleep, for I needed time by myself to think. I could not take events to their obvious conclusion, not without her complete understanding, not without her conscious will and all her intellect present to make that decision.

Of course, I thought too long, finally losing track of time and self in my music, and she crept in and tore away the mask before I was aware of her.

She understood me then, in that single eternal moment of pure horror. I like to think that was the only instant in which she felt only horror, and no sweeter emotion. Surely in later days she felt disgust, impatience, even fear, but that was the only moment when her distress remained unallayed by any softer emotion, by any ambiguity of desire or feeling. She fell to the floor, the strength deserting her limbs, and she sat there for the longest time with her lovely dress askew, her mind paralyzed by the sight of me.

She stared into my eyes just as I stared into hers, and in that terrible moment we both understood the length and the destination of the path we had embarked on. That was the true point of no return: we were both caught in this web which I had spun like a dark, malevolent spider, and then showered with diamonds and gold, to gleam like a fairy creation covered with a mist of dew.

When she pushed the mask across the floor to me with her trembling hand, I covered that moment of dark illumination along with my face. From that moment on we both skirted the question of love, carefully stepping around the explosive potential which lay between us. It dwelt there silent and threatening, like a dark chasm covered by a blanket weighted at the corners with stones.

We danced a careful, silent dance around that unspoken future for many days, as she remained with me unquestioning. She was fascinated by my music. When we sang together, as we did daily, I always pushed her to excel, I urged her to make the most of her voice. I found this easiest to do when I had induced in her the sensual dream we had shared that first evening. Her eyes would grow dim, her lovely breast would swell, and her voice would soar beyond her comprehension.

She was aware that this is what I did. Every day she came to me for it. I would sit at the piano or the organ, I would sit in my chair reading the leatherbound books which lined the walls of my library. A door would open and I would close my eyes and listen to the rustle of her brocade dress and the soft tap of her slippers as she came to me. She would stand before me, her breath coming fast with her anticipation, her eyes sparkling, and I would rise and sing to her until she released herself to the music and to her potential. Always she came to me with her eyes giving me her trusting consent. I never enslaved her or enthralled her unless she came to me, asking.

Well, not at first. But I am ahead of myself.

When we did not sing we lived much as any comfortable couple would do. She spent mornings in her room, she sat with me in the library late into the night sewing or listening as I read to her. Often she went shopping, just to drink in the sunlight and the bustle of Paris. I took her out trusting that she would return, and she returned without thinking she might prefer to do otherwise.

Neither of us could make food worth a damn. She had not been taught to cook, and I had never cared enough to cultivate the skill. She would buy exotic ingredients and undertake fabulous projects. Inevitably she would spoil them and come to me for help, the corners of her mouth tilted downward with temporary dejection that turned to embarrassed laughter when I viewed her latest smoldering efforts. At those times I would risk all to take her to a restaurant, paying the suspicious maitre'd enormous sums to give us a private room and to have the waiters leave our food without entering. She reveled in these evenings, taking an innocent joy which I found unfailingly appealing.

She could have burned the contents of my house to cinders and I would never have minded. It was my greatest pleasure to watch her making herself at home, the sapphires and emeralds I had given her sparkling on her breast or dripping from her fingers, the clothes I had bought for her hanging gracefully from her shoulders.

She was mine in all ways but one. During the inevitable times that this single flaw in our otherwise perfect relationship troubled me, I was able to shrug it off. An hour or so alone stalking the passages of the Opera was all it took to renew my resolution: not to show how much I desired her. I feared that it might drive her away. She had often smiled at me affectionately, but never since that first night had she looked at me with desire in her eyes...

We might have gone on that way forever, quite happily, but at last I arranged for her to sing a lead role in the Opera, as she had always longed to do. It was an absolute triumph... and a crashing disaster, the bleak foreshadowing of the night when the heavy chandelier would come screaming down, to smash into the fleeing crowd...

My hopes and dreams came crashing down that night, harder and faster than any chandelier ever could, shattering noisily into glittering shards around my feet. The weeks of contentment, the first happiness I had ever known, it all melted away mercilessly, leaving only a gathering black cloud of rage.

Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny. Her old childhood friend, a blatantly handsome boy who dared to come to my love's bedside after the opera, who dared to lift and kiss her hand. His touch was welcome to her, and my misery knew no bounds. He would steal her away, if I were not very careful, and very cruel...

That night I began again to use the power of my voice in a manipulative fashion, to enthrall rather than merely to enchant. I sang to her again as her Angel, knowing that the boy skulked outside her rooms, waiting for her to emerge. I mesmerized her effortlessly, letting my desire for her flow into the song, giving it a sensual insistence beyond words, which drew her gliding to the mirror on silent feet, reaching out to me with the strangest look in her eyes, half of seduction and half of astonishment.

I heard his voice at her door and I was forced to seize her and pull her from the room before he could force the door open and catch me at her side. I took her wrist harder than I had intended, and she shrank from my hand. My misery was complete as I ushered her down the path to the lake. Raoul de Chagny burst into her dressing room, but we were gone. However, a part of her heart remained with him, a part of her which I could not steal or control.

The next day, wretched beyond compare, I took her back up into the opera for rehearsal, and when I returned home I guiltily let myself into her room and picked up her diary. She had spent a long, silent time before she slept sitting in her room with the candles burning, the only sound a faint scratching from her quill pen. I could not sleep, so I sat and watched the candlelight under her door, and I knew she wrote of what had happened to her.

The quality of the silence that night was tense with overtones that had never before been present between us. This tension was not wholly due to the intrusion of Raoul, I knew. I had revealed my desire to possess her utterly, I had dominated her with my voice, I had touched her roughly and pulled her with me against her will.

Now I held the slender volume in my hands, deliberating whether or not I would open it. At last I steeled my will to commit this little intrusion, this unforgivable gaucherie. If I wanted to keep her I would need to know her state of mind, I would require all the psychological weaponry I could gather.

I opened the book.

It interests me to analyze the significance of touch in human relationships. I have spent the vast portion of my life without the human pleasure of touching. For touching is exactly that: a pleasure, a reassurance of life and of being needed. It must be lovely to touch and be touched freely in return.

Never since our first night together had I felt it permissible to touch Christine Daae. With becoming shyness, she avoided my hand. Gracefully, inobtrusively, she made her wishes known by the widening eyes, straightening her posture, or with the soft, almost imperceptible tremor of her lip or her fingers. To make contact with her was forbidden.

I know now why that was. Subconsciously she could not help but be aware of the explosive sensuality which threatened to erupt between us. By refusing to allow even innocent contact between us she preserved a fictional belief that I was still her angel, or more accurately, a surrogate father. Forbidding contact between us protected her from the unwanted knowledge of my desire... and her own. Put simply, even an innocent touch equated with sexuality in her mind, and she was not yet ready to accept that inevitable aspect of our relationship.

However, with Raoul that was not an issue. The words in her diary lingered with pleasure on her reunion with Raoul, and she wrote at some length of the moment when he held her hand. She dwelled fondly on his noble position and the status he might give her. She spoke of warmth and reassurance, her joy to see him again, the memories of their childhood together.

Of me, she wrote only this:

I did not know how to react when Erik arrived for me tonight. There was his voice, so lovely, but with a tone of power I have never heard before. It frightened me, but yet I went to him. I couldn't help myself, I felt as if I were under a spell. Then he reached out and pulled me into the mirror with him. His hand was like a cold claw on my wrist. I wanted to cry out and pull my hand away, but when I saw his eyes I didn't dare: they were colder than his flesh, glaring into my room as if something there enraged him. He did not let me go, he made me follow him, and all the while that voice pounded in my head, awakening shameful thoughts in me, thoughts I never dreamed of having.

Perhaps my dark angel is a devil, a demon, awaiting only the right moment to reveal himself as such. If so, then I must be very careful. If he were to lose control, to drop his gentlemanly facade, and reveal himself to me in all his malice... if he were to lose control of the dark passions I sense in him... I shudder to think what I may be risking when I stay at his side. And I would not want to lose what I have just found again, after so long...

I slammed the book, my hands shaking with anger. A black madness passed before my eyes, and when it passed, I found my fingers had left deep dents in the candle I held. So that is the way of it then, I remember thinking. Dark passions? I flung her diary contemptuously onto her small writing table. If she wanted to occupy her time conjuring up dismal visions of dark passions, I could give them to her, far more capably than that noble boy.

Christine Daae had never dreamed of the black extents of my passions, born of a lifetime of the world's cruelty and abuse. I'd been kicked and spurned, caged and attacked. I knew the stab of a treacherous knife in the night, the burning humiliation of gawking crowds, the bored savagery of heathen royalty. And there was a single lady I had known intimately, my savage jealous mistress:

Death.

Christine feared rape, perhaps, but she did not fear death. Not yet, at any rate. She did not know that Erik had long dealt death in the service of the Shah. She had never guessed at the existence of the mirrored torture chamber which lay silent and locked away at the end of the house furthest from her room. She could not know the living hell I might put her Vicomte through, if I chose. Stories abounded in the Opera of my favorite weapon, but she had never witnessed the wicked flight and twist of the Punjab lasso. She had never conceived of anything so deadly and efficient as that agile piece of catgut, and she could never guess the merciless accuracy with which I was accustomed to use it.

If I had wished to rape Christine Daae, I would have done it long ago. But death was an ever-present possibility. Why, I slept in death's bed every night, and she dwelt in a thousand black corners of my mind. As a result of this dawning jealousy, I might kill Christine to preserve her status as my possession, and then again, I might kill her simply because she could never be wholly mine...

I remained sunk in these evil thoughts for an uncounted time. I was somewhat surprised when Christine returned to me promptly that evening, and I initiated her daily lesson myself, throwing her into the malevolent drama of Faust. I played the pipe organ fiercely, altering the rhythms slightly to suit my purposes, allowing them to become savage and driving beneath my fingers. At times she gasped for breath. Her voice was divine, and it pierced me with the most exquisite sorrow I had ever known.

After we finished I stared at her with remorse. The child was exhausted. She had sung hard in rehearsal even before returning for this lesson, and perhaps I had pushed her past her limits. In the moment as I rose and extended my arms to indicate that she should sit, I regretted my anger and I almost thought my suspicions of young Chagny were unjustified. I felt myself smile down at her.

She fell exhausted into my chair, her delicate hands resting on the carven black arms. She crossed her tiny ankles primly and hastily tucked them beneath her skirts. Her eyes darted at me guiltily to see if I had observed the slight flash of her bare skin.

My single moment of optimism fled. Now she feared the touch of my eyes, as well as my hands... the smile melted from my face as swiftly as it had risen, unrecoverable.

I knew my fists were clenching helplessly and I turned away. In that bleak twisted moment, I teetered on the edge of the dark chasm of denied sensuality which had lain between us so long. I teetered, and the image of her guilty eyes made the ground crumble beneath my feet. Behind those eyes had lingered an unconscious shadow, a fleeting image of the desire she would not admit that she felt for me. And so I fell into the pit, alone... the strongest need I had ever felt for her before doubled, then trebled, then comparison was washed away in the tide of lust ravening through my body, bending my back with the anguish of the surge.

She rose, alarmed by the possibility that I might be ill.

"Erik!" her voice invaded my ears, filled with an almost tender concern. "Are you all right?"

I did not answer her. Stiffly I forced my back to straighten, and I stalked from the room. I could not afford to speak to her, not now, when the combination of depression and lust threatened my sanity. I put on my cloak and my hat and left her standing helplessly in the library, her face distressed and hurt.

For the first time in many weeks, the evil Phantom, that murderous entity described in fear and rumor, stalked the corridors of the Opera.

I had run upon Joseph Buquet when I returned her to the Opera that morning. The fool had been entertaining the giggling ballet girls with a gruesome description of me, building his reputation fatuously, enjoying himself at my expense. He became the unwitting target of my frustrated anger.

I stalked him that evening as I would do for many days to come, learning his habits and his ways. He continued to wag his foolish tongue when he would have done well to bite it. My wrath was roused, and I grew to be his bitter enemy. If I required a victim, he would do admirably.

That night when I returned, she was still there. She slept, and I stood over her as I had done so often before, simply drinking in the sight of her as she lay there, her face peaceful and open, her body candidly relaxed as she never was in my presence.

Despite my repeated, patient instructions, she did not know how to operate the panel which controlled the electric heat, and the remnants of a fire laid in the early afternoon still burned upon the hearth. The room was too warm for her. She had chosen a short silken gown and had lain down to sleep beneath only the sheet. Even the sheet must have been uncomfortable, for she had pushed it away.

The cream silk nightgown lay enticingly across her slender thighs, rising on one side to reveal the smooth curve of her hip and the slightest tantalizing glimpse of her lacy underthings. Her legs were together to the knees, demure even in relaxation, and her slim, rounded calves disappeared beneath the sheet. Her hair curled in a raven cloud behind her on the pillow. She held one loose fist next to her face and the other hand lay open on the mattress beside her pillow. Her lips were parted slightly, begging to be kissed. The silk lay in delicate ripples across her body, and her little nipples stood up against the cloth in a manner which seemed deliberately contrived to drive me slowly insane.

I was seized with the sudden compulsion to draw her, to reproduce this vision so that I might look at it any time I liked. I could have it even when... even after she...

Unlike her, I could keep it with me forever.

I slipped from the room in absolute silence and fumbled at the piano, where I kept the thick, creamy paper on which I ruled staves and scribbled music. I had never drawn a person before, but I had drawn architectural plans many times and occasionally I had been moved by boredom to attempt more challenging tasks. My eye had never yet failed me, and I approached this task with confidence, taking a dead coal from the hearth of her fireplace, blackening my fingers with that clumsy pencil, sketching by candlelight. Hesitantly at first, then with growing assurance, I stroked the coal against the paper.

At last I was satisfied. The image on the paper before me might have risen and lifted her sweet mouth to kiss me. My eerie, unpredictable genius had manifested itself once again, in the creation of this portrait of mingled innocence and sensuality. It looked exactly like her and yet it did not look like her, for my ideal of her had imposed itself onto the paper, smoothing out any slight flaws which might have been present in her, bringing out the subtlety of curves in her body so that an observer could hardly have kept from reaching out to it, expecting to touch warm flesh rather than cool parchment. I had captured every detail with love and with clinically steady fingers despite the trembling of my heart.

I hid the drawing beneath stacks of my music on top of the piano. It would not do to let her see it... she would know then that I had crept into her room, that I had caressed her silken body with a lover's eye. Of course, I had seen her wear much less. The costumes she wore in the ballet were at times scandalously brief. But she deliberately chose to display herself in them... and it was certain that she had not chosen to display herself to me this night.

I washed my hands and started to ready myself for bed, but I could not resist the impulse to go in and look at her again. What folly and madness, to put her room next to mine! But there had been nowhere else for it to go, unless I had located it beyond the torture chamber.

She lay on her side now, her legs drawn up lightly. I came into the room more quietly than air, gazing at her.

She stirred and I blew out my candle. The room was very faintly illuminated by a few lingering coals in her fireplace. I saw her turn onto her back and then lift herself on her elbows, glancing drowsily about. She could not see me lingering in the shadow. I was thankful that I had not paused to remove my outer garments, and I still wore the black cloak and hat which defeated her searching eyes.

She drew the sheet over herself, sighing lightly. I watched her hand stir over her breasts, a tantalizing, lingering self- caress. "Erik," she sighed aloud, and her sleepy voice was filled with yearning...

I trembled with the need to answer her. I wavered in tortured indecision, wanting nothing more than to go to her, but somehow I remained still. I hoped that she could not hear the tormented pounding of my heart.

When she finally breathed deeply in sleep, I let myself out and lay in my coffin, feeling for once anything but dead. On the contrary, I was wretchedly alive, burning with a pounding agony. I tried to will it away, I attempted every mental discipline of which I had ever heard or studied, but it defeated me. At last, weary in every bone from tossing and turning, I slept.

And dreamed. I dreamed of Christine Daae. In this dream I stood at her bedside once again, looking down on her lithe young body covered only by the rippling silk and transparent lace. Her lashes fluttered open and she looked up at me with all the desire I had ever hoped to see in her lovely blue eyes. I realized with bitter disappointment that it was indeed a dream, but I did not have the will to shift and break it. My dream hands reached out to caress her, as I had not dared to do in reality. I felt the throbbing heat which meant I was ready for her, but an invisible barrier stopped my hands only inches from her sweet, pink flesh. Of course I could feel nothing, for it was only a dream, but I did feel the unfulfilled lust for her, pounding toward pain. Helplessly I brushed my fingers along the intangible, frustrating force which kept me from her.

And suddenly her hands responded to the command of my will, shadowing the motions of my own, running along the gown which covered her breasts, cupping them gently, moving down past her navel and then pushing up the thin nightgown to reveal her heaven of flesh. Her eyes were smoky, brilliant with fire, and she pushed the gown past her breasts, her fingers kneading them as mine could not. Then her hands slipped down to her slender thighs, which parted slightly. She whispered my name, an invitation, her voice bell-like, resonant. And yet I could not break through the barrier which separated us!

I felt the heated release pound through me and I awoke with disgust, realizing what had happened. I had thought such things to be long past, and yet while she stayed in my house, safe in her chaste little bedroom, it was almost certain to recur. At least it was a form of relief.

I rose, resigned to the impossibility of sleep. It was almost morning anyhow, and I shut myself into my bath. Madness threatened me, the uncontrollable loss of self and control. In the inevitable events which were to follow, I would react instinctively to dawning misery after dawning misery in the only way I knew how...

I emerged from the bath, tired from the long night but resolved that I would not give in to the mad fury or the lust. As I entered the main room, I saw that she had risen. She sat at my piano wearing a thin dressing gown, her clumsy fingers picking out a child's tune.

When she saw me she started. I had been too silent, and she had not realized that I was in the house again. Heaven knows where she thought I might have spent the night, but she had not known I was back and now she was caught out of her room in her night attire. She was caught making the most outlandish racket on her maestro's fine piano, which I played with such skill that it brought the tears into her eyes. She was startled and needlessly embarrassed.

She surged to her feet nervously, her hand clutching at the piano for support, and I saw the music slide and then topple to the floor in a slow, clear cascade, the white sheets fluttering into a dove-wing fall, and with them my drawing of her.

"Go to your room and I will take care of the mess," I commanded her, crossing the distance in a stride, but she was already on her knees trying to pick up the scattered papers, her little hands fleet, her mouth stammering apologies which halted in mid-breath as she uncovered the portrait I had made of her.

I sighed helplessly as her white hand rose to her throat. Her hair fell forward, hiding the shock on her face. She slid my music away and picked up the sheet, holding it in shaking fingers, carefully examining the work.

"This is how you see me..." she whispered, so faintly I could hardly hear her. I saw her shoulders rise and fall as she tried to swallow her emotions. I could just imagine how it looked to her, and I knew she understood precisely how the sight of her in that pose had affected me.

When she finally gathered the courage to look up at me, the accusation in her eyes broke my heart.

I wretchedly watched the play of emotions across her face as she wondered if I had been present to witness her caress her own breast and utter my name with longing. Fear, anger, and shame replaced the blush on her cheeks. I wanted to defuse that fear, to wash away her shame, but I could not. "You came into my room last night!" she shook the page at me, her voice rising. "You--" words failed her.

I shrugged at her, the only answer I could give. There was no excuse I could offer her. How puerile to defend oneself with excuses, to make up lame and fragile stories! Should I say to her, 'I wanted to be certain you were all right,' 'I wanted to see that you were warm enough,' 'I wanted to know if you were still here,' or should I give her the deeper truth? Should I say to her 'I have made a habit of standing at your bedside every evening while you sleep, and all the while I do so, I want nothing more than to climb into your little bed and ravish you!'

I could not say this, and so I said nothing.

She finally flung the paper from her with finality. She rose, leaving my music scattered on the floor, and straightened her dressing gown. I thought she might speak to me, but she gathered her dignity around her like a shroud and disappeared into her bedroom. I heard the bolt slide in her door.

Helpless and tormented, I now had the agony of watching her flee daily into the charming arms of Raoul de Chagny. I wavered between all-encompassing hatred and helpless adoration of her. Do I even need to speak of the evening when the boy declared his love for her, and she admitted her own feelings for him?

I need only to admit that I had seen it coming. I sensed that it would be that night. In the midst of the maddened rage which possessed me, in the midst of my calculated preparations, the hapless Joseph Buquet blundered into my presence. He spied me entering my house through the door into the torture chamber. He saw me work the trigger, he knew which stone I shoved aside... I felt his eyes at the last moment, and turned, and I made good my threat to kill him.

I could not have let him live, really, for he now knew the way to enter my house! Even Christine did not know that corridor into the torture chamber, for fear that she should be trapped there. I could not tell her how to escape from it lest she reveal that knowledge to Raoul. If ever Raoul entered my room of mirrors, I did not want him to escape.

When Buquet lay dead I untangled the Punjab lasso from his throat. I would hang him high, to warn her publicly that she should not commit this idle betrayal of her dark, savage benefactor...

Little did it matter. In fact, it proved the very catalyst they needed for their loving tryst. That tender scene has been quite accurately reproduced for the public eye, so I will not torment myself by recounting it.

And so I released the chandelier to crash at her feet, hardly caring that I might miscalculate and drop it on her head. She had betrayed me, she had denied her feelings for me and given her love to another, when I needed her so desperately... I almost wished that I had been beneath the chandelier myself, to die magnificently in the spectacular blaze of light and crystal.

After that, she did not return to me. I had not expected her to return, really. In loneliness I turned to her diary, read every word of it, and I relived the first sweet days of our time together. Then I suffered the days when her original esteem for me grew ambivalent, and finally I endured the time when her dawning desire for Raoul eclipsed her tender feelings for me completely. Her diary made her position quite plain. She was obsessed with his noble status, his sky blue eyes and blond hair, his boyish good looks.

She had written of the contrast between us... the beauty of my music and my devotion did not repair the damage done by the tragedy of my face. And always her meditations returned to this: that she would be the Comtesse de Chagny, that her sons would be Comtes and Vicomtes, like their father and his relations. Even more than his youth and his face, I knew then that his title had seduced her from my side, a certainty which made me sick at heart and in body. I felt actual nausea from my revulsion at her pettiness.

And there was another disturbing aspect of her thoughts, one which I had only dimly guessed before. Christine Daae had seized on me as a replacement for her father, and in my absence surely she would expect Raoul to fulfill the same position. She innocently expected the man in her life to play the role of guardian and protector, and she did not really consider that her husband would also necessarily be her lover. I had to wonder what would happen between her and Raoul on their wedding night. If he failed to rouse the latent sensuality in her, that night might well be disastrous to her young illusions. Even if he managed to arouse passion in her, she might think it shameful and turn from him exactly as she had turned from me...

My poor, thoughtless child, obsessed with status and beauty, a victim of her twisted innocence, still seeking her dead father! My perfect angel, my prima donna, her little soul prey to vanity and ignorance like any other woman's. I needed a woman with a strong heart true as silver, but my fancy had selected an immature, petty child who happened to have the voice of an angel. Silly girl, without a thought in her pretty little head! Fickle, with no capacity to appreciate the finer things I offered her, with no understanding of the fact that I had fastened my last, fading hopes for redemption on the chance that she might give me her love, that same love which was now given to Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny.

There will be those who think that in Christine Daae I got no more than I deserved, that I had sought her deliberately and deserved what I found. This is not true: I did not actively make the decision one morning to go out into the Opera and find an ingenue to take to myself. I did not set forth in search of a lover. Such cravings were long past me at that time. In fact, I quailed at the thought of accidentally bestowing my love, for I knew that it would bring only torment to me. I took care to shield my eyes from the bright procession of laughing ballet girls with their flashing legs and their innocent little bodies in scanty costumes. I did not want to think about them. I had long ago accepted that I could never have a lover.

I spent my days going about my odd, dark business without hope and without the lecherous schemes people may have attributed to me. It was only by chance that the voice of Christine Daae pierced me to the depths of my black heart.

The first time I saw her, I had gone to Box Five in hopes of retrieving a book which I had dropped the evening before. The stage was filled with rehearsal, and I was careful that they should not see me, so I took longer than I might otherwise have done.

She stood by Monsieur Reyer's piano, picking out the melody of an aria with one finger, her pure sweet voice soft as she sang along. I glanced down involuntarily to find the source of these unfamiliarly beautiful notes, and as my eyes rested on her, Carlotta happened to pass. The diva spurned her with a harsh laugh and with her spiteful glance, and Christine's delicate little voice faltered. Even from the box, I could see the glimmer of tears rising in her eyes.

I stood for a single moment, looking down at her with righteous protective anger, pity, and love stirring in my heart, then I vanished into the walls with my book. I knew in that instant that for both our sakes I must never see or hear her again.

But that vow was not to be kept. I encountered her by accident the next evening. The little Scandinavian child, fresh out of the conservatoire, had been moved into the dressing room which lay beyond one gate to my dark world. I had gone to use this gate and I stopped, stricken to find the room occupied by her.

She knelt to pray and I stared at her through the one-way glass of the mirror, listening to her plead to the spirit of her dead father, begging for him to send the Angel of Music. Without thinking I gave in to the mad impulse of a moment. I lifted my voice to her, and committed us both to this descent into Hell.

But I digress. After dropping the chandelier, I returned immediately to my home. I turned my back on the world, I concentrated my full attention on the manuscript of my opera, my Don Juan Triumphant, with renewed dedication. A plan was forming in the back of my tortured mind.

I kept the picture of her which I had drawn close at hand. It gave passion to my creation. It supported the desperate madness of my final scheme. I would court my lovely ladies, Christine and my mistress Death, as I had never courted them before. In this scheme, I would have all or I would have nothing...

Eventually I completed my opera and also my plans. It took me six long months, months in which Christine Daae never showed her face in my lonely home beyond the lake. Six months during which she allowed herself to be romanced by Raoul de Chagny. A short eternity of days which she used to force her memories of me to subside into uneasy silence. She persuaded herself that all she felt for me was fear.

Even so, I did not despair. I knew I was still her father figure, her angel, her deepest guilty fantasy. Her feelings for me were still there even though she had curtained off that part of her mind. She knew all the paths which led to that silent, dreadful pitfall, and her feet could be led back across them to the brink, where she might be tumbled in to join me in its fathomless depths.

I had only to use my voice to draw her back across the silent distance that separated us. She could not resist it.

Confidently I embarked on the plot, ordering the costume of the Red Death and attending the masquerade ball. The stupid, sullen managers would be intimidated easily into performing my work. They would stage my opera, in which she would play the lead. My opera would be my triumph, in which I would play opposite her, undertaking the tender part of her seducer before the very crowds of Paris! I would be Don Juan Triumphant, or else I would simply be Don Juan, sent violently off to Hell for my crimes of passion.

I chose the stroke of midnight for my grand entrance. I almost laughed when I gave the managers the score of my Don Juan, glorying in the fear on their faces. Then I turned to her, my breath catching in my throat. It had been so long since I had seen her. She cowered in the arms of her Vicomte, a thin gold chain about her throat. So possessive his arms, so triumphant and challenging his eyes! Ah, I comprehended it. An engagement, of course. She had promised herself to him. She had forgotten my power over her... I felt the bitter smile rise on my lips beneath the skeleton mask.

I stepped toward her, halted in front of them, and I let the burning command of my eyes draw her to me, deliberately flaunting my power over her. Delicately I reached out with both hands and I let my fingertips brush slowly against her flesh as I took the chain, lifting the engagement ring from its warm hollow in her breast.

The color rose to her white cheeks, born of betrayal: her betrayal of me, and her betrayal of herself and her betrothed husband, as her senses responded to my touch..

Unexpected rage beyond my control surfaced when I examined the gaudy bejeweled ring. Set with rubies and diamonds, it was nothing more than a flagrant boast of the boy's wealth. She no longer wore any of the jewels I had given to her...

I ripped the chain from her slender throat, not caring that I might hurt her soft skin. She was mine, and I said as much, hearing my voice come unfamiliarly harsh and strident, not at all the loving caress I wanted to make in her ears. Fearing a further loss of control, I stalked away with her engagement ring burning my hand like a coal of hell. I took it to the roof of the Opera and flung it as hard as I could away from me, into the bustling streets. The merciful night swallowed its cruel glint.

I went back to my den in silence, biding my time. I would preside at the rehearsals, silent and unseen. I would know all that transpired, I would manipulate my little puppets from the wings. Woe to any who dared try to thwart me!

When Christine Daae traveled alone to visit her father's tomb in Perros, I felt it quite appropriate to abandon the preparations for my opera. The possibilities inherent in her journey lifted my desolate spirits. This might be just the chance I needed to seduce her away from Raoul's side, without resorting to the violence I had planned. Even now I did not want to carry my cruel plan to fruition, I was willing to take any risk to gain her peacefully. I followed her.

In Perros that night, she crept out to kneel at her father's grave. I stirred from my vigil, I anticipated her destination, and I rushed to conceal myself in the graveyard before she arrived. I grasped with both hands at the frail straw this opportunity presented to me. Her angel would once again appear to her in her darkest hour, and she would be drawn with him back into the joyous retreat we had known during our earliest days together. Even if I would only be as a father to her, we would be happy...

It almost worked. It would have worked. I sang for her more beautifully than I had ever done before, and she overcame her instinctive fear. She glided toward the sound of my voice, her lovely face lighting with recognition and rapture, her arms lifting for me to take her and draw her up to me where I stood beside the cross. I reached out for her with love...

And the blasted boy shouted to her, breaking my spell. I knew the most intense frustration! He must have come after her in secret, as I had, into the desolate country to be at her side. He called to her and she wavered between the two of us, helpless and torn. I renewed my call, exercising all the persuasion at my command--

And she turned and went to him instead.

Words cannot describe the disappointment I endured at her choice, or the pleasure I felt at the idea of killing him. The rage gathered in me again and I stepped forth boldly to taunt him to come to me. I lifted my staff and sent forth fire, a simple trick I had learned from the prestidigitators and gypsies I traveled with in my youth. The cocky fool came forward to fight me. Had he taken only a few more paces my lasso would have caught him, but she halted him and drew him away, her little white face pinched with fear.

I threw a final curse at them both and slipped away, a devastated and ruined creature, back to my lair to lick my wounds and prepare for final vengeance.

At last the war was ready to begin. I knew that they would wait for me on the gala night of my Opera. I would oblige the Vicomte by walking directly into his childish trap. I would stand revealed onstage before all of Paris, vulnerable to the bullets from the pistols of the young fool and all his cohorts. In the sight of everyone I would abandon pride and lay open my heart to Christine. Let her plan to elope with him if she would-- I knew her little vanities, I knew she could not resist the lure of a prestigious final gala performance in that role which I had written to showcase her voice and her talents.

She would perform in my opera, she would sing for me one final time. And then I would take her away with me. By force, which I no longer doubted would be necessary, I would take her back to my home. Raoul would pursue, of course. I would subdue him, take him to the instant of death, and give her the final choice between us. She could free him and remain with me willingly, or she could slay him and remain with me against her will.

Either way, I hardly doubted that the three of us would die. He would never leave her with me, after all, even if her choice set him free, and then I should have to kill him. When I killed him she would kill herself, and then I would join her in death.

All thoughts of intimacy with her had reluctantly vanished. I could twist her mind, I could bend her to my will. I could use cunning to show her the truth of her blackest desires or I could take her to me by force, simply and without prelude, but these were things I was not willing to do. Far better to die, and to let her die, than to corrupt her so. Far better to die with blood the only stain on my hands and my conscience.

I no longer cared how this inevitable end might come about. I would make this little present to my cruel mistresses, both of them. I would be spared the misery of living without Christine. Raoul would also be spared this fate. And Christine... she would be spared the anguish of living out her natural life while knowing her lover died at my hand. She would also be spared the torture of becoming my wife. A kindness to all of us, this ending. Played out in the finest dramatic style, an elegant denouement, worthy of my genius and my flair for death.

I sat at the organ and I stroked the drawing of her, wishing I might play the Pygmalion to this little creation just as I had done with Christine when I wakened her voice. My fingertips spoiled one of the smooth lines, just as my touch would have marred her virgin body. A single tear fell onto the keyboard, and I wrenched myself away. No time for weakness. Time for my opera to begin.

On cue, Piangi fell to my lasso and I took his costume. I had timed it well. Her beautiful voice in the distance... I might almost imagine that the tableau set by the opera had become real, as I stepped from behind the scrims with the hood pulled well over my face.

Ah yes, she knew my voice. She knew it as well as I knew hers, but the show must continue, mustn't it, Christine? Not a move to startle me, or I might commit some incredible crime. We are surrounded by innocent spectators, any one of whom does not deserve to die... or is it I who do not deserve to die with your Vicomte's bullet in my brain, Christine?

Why do you not speak, why do you not cry out? Why do you answer my song so fervently, why do you let me step forward to claim you, as I pull back the hood of my cloak so that all may know who stands before them? Do you love me, Christine? Do I dare to hope even after so much--

Such were my thoughts, such was the ridiculous ecstatic folly which sprang from some unknown well in my soul, only to be crushed when she reached up with her treacherous little hand and snatched my mask away, revealing me to everyone. It didn't really matter, it was quite clever of her in truth, but a part of me withered and died just the same.

I could not let that interfere with my plan.

I snatched up the mask and kicked the trigger which dropped the curtain to reveal Piangi's body, and which also killed the lights just long enough for me to drag her away with one of my hands tight over her screams. My other arm contained her frail struggles as easily as a boy might cage a trapped bird in his hands.

She was sobbing when I dumped her on the floor in my lair. She must have thought I meant to rape her. The little fool. I turned my back to her and waited for Raoul. The silence stretched and she challenged me. We exchanged words, meaningless really, hers calculated to hurt and mine indifferent, stating the bleak facts of my life. What did I care to keep secrets from her now? She would not live long enough to reveal them. Poor, pretty child who had the misfortune to be loved by a monster...

I was sure Raoul would not be long, and when I recovered my self-possession I made her go to her room. She hesitated to obey, so I took her by the arm and flung her in, and I shouted at her to put on the wedding dress I had bought. It lay on her bed, yards of white silk and taffeta and Valenciennes lace, with little satin slippers, waiting for her. The veil lay on my piano, made of gossamer and lace trimmed with flowers, and beside it rested a simple gold ring which I had bought for her, the ring which would signify that she was mine before she died.

I waited a sufficient time and summoned her with a harsh word. She stepped out, a vision in the dress, more beautiful even than in the little sketch which still lay against the music stand on my pipe organ. Her face was filled with anger and fright and timid questions. And still her eyes wondered why I did not crush her to me and vent my passions on her... she was such a little angel...

I felt my cold heart melt somewhat at the sight of her. I had meant to force Raoul to watch as I laid the veil on her curls and placed the ring on her finger, but now I wanted to possess that moment entirely myself. I lifted the veil and took it to her, aware that I murmured words of song and that she answered me, her voice soft but her words cruel, even as I pushed the ring onto her trembling finger. I could hardly make sense of what we said, my concentration straining for some sign of Raoul.

It tires me to discuss what happened next, to recount the unfolding of our little drama. Events occurred just as I had expected. He came bravely, cursing me. I caught him with ease and laid the cruel choice in her lap. I think I had gone quite mad, for it is hard to remember exactly what words were spoken and which emotions were felt. I do recall that I only felt the pain as if from a great distance. A huge cold void grew in my spirit, distancing me from the two of them. I wanted to wander away where I could be alone and silent, where I could compose myself. I would take my little sketch with me, and she would comfort me... yes, I would keep that image of her in the coffin with me when they were both gone and I could also die.

I came back to myself abruptly and found Raoul staring at me in horror. Christine's arms were around me, and I dimly realized that she had kissed me.. Her veil was drawn back, her lips were moist and red, and her eyes... her blue eyes were utterly empty.

A bribe. That was the knife that pierced my spirit. These were her only thoughts: Maybe if I humor the madman he'll let us go. He'll sell us our lives for the price of a kiss.

I wanted to throw her through the stone wall and I wanted to kiss her again, because I had missed that first one. She pulled me to her in a fierce embrace, her little mouth by my ear, whispering that she would come back to sleep with me if only I let them go now. She would return and give me her body. She wanted to come back, without Raoul. Only I must let them both leave now, and let her marry him after she had finished with me.

I stood back, staring at her, unable to believe what I'd heard. In her eyes I read absolute resolution. She would return to me willingly to prostitute herself.

God, did she think I wanted it to be that way? Did she think that her body was all I wanted of her? Looking at her I could see that I had succeeded in my initial plan to drag her down into the deranged passions I felt for her. Her eyes had changed, exhibiting neither lifelessness nor pain. Now they were alive with a bizarre and loathsome sort of anticipation. She burned with the madness of her decision. She had found her solution: under these bizarre circumstances making love to me would require no guilt of her. It would be a noble sacrifice, and at the same time it would feed the hidden lust which had grown in her for so long... no honest love, but an intrigue born of seduction, guilt, and deception.

My demented tower of schemes collapsed into revulsion. By all means, I would let her go. Immediately. I wanted her out of my sight. I passed my hand over my eyes. I would let her go.

With that decision, I loosed the boy. I could hear the entire cast, perhaps the entire audience of the Opera, their angry cries resounding as they made their way down. They must be gone before that mob arrived. I pushed the two of them away, urging them to hurry.

I watched them go, and turned back to my lair. How must it be done? I resented the fact that I must rush the moment, or else the mob would be only too glad to arrange my death for me. But they would not! I reserved the right to claim the dignity of devising my own death, in my own time.

I did not have time even to sit before I heard a soft sound. I looked up and she was there again, her little eyes bright. After only a few brief hours she would return to me to fulfill her promise, and after that her wretched curiosity would be satisfied, and she would be free to make her aristocratic little life... she pulled off her wedding ring and handed it to me, her eyes meeting mine without shame. She really meant to go through with it. Ah, I was so tired.

"Christine, I love you," I murmured, knowing they were the last words any mortal would ever hear pass my lips. She was gone again, and I sat in my chair. The noise of the mob persisted, they were almost upon me. I closed my cloak around myself. The outer door flew open and the candles flickered and died in the draught.

I used those final moments to steal away, dropping my mask on the chair. I latched the door to her room. It was concealed, invisible from the other side of the wall. None of these fools would ever know they had not explored the whole house. Only she knew that the door was there, only she knew how to open it.

Let the mob rage, let them destroy what they found in my home, let them steal my possessions. I was safe from them. I needed only the time to write this, my final epitaph, and then I would be finished.

At last all is in readiness.

All that remains is to put this manuscript upon her writing table, place a fast-acting poison on my tongue, take the sketch of her into my hands, and take a moment to arrange myself upon her bed. I will leave it to her to place me in my coffin.

Their fists and knives never touched me, Christine. I escaped them easily, and I could have been waiting here to hold you to your little promise. But this is really just a little more appropriate, isn't it, Christine? You will return only to find the corpse who might have been your lover. It's a little more ironic this way, a little crueler. You see, in death I have at last redeemed myself, and now it's your turn to make atonement. Escape me, escape your haunted Phantom...

If you can.

End.


End file.
